This note derives the Golden Rule of capital accumulation in a Chakrabortytype economy, i.e. a two-period OLG economy where longevity is endogenous. It is shown that the capital per worker maximizing steady-state consumption per head is inferior to the Golden Rule capital level prevailing under exogenous longevity. We characterize also the Lifetime Golden Rule, that is, the capital per worker m...

We draw attention to an apparent puzzle in the aggregate consumption behavior of Singaporeans. In stark contrast to the rest of the world, the average propensity to consume (APC) has plummeted to just two-fifths of national income by the year 2003, leaving the Singapore economy without a dependable built-in stabilizer. This phenomenon represents a notable departure from the stable longrun equil...

We consider the climate-policy implications of non-constant time preferences when there is no commitment to future policies. The conceptual and quantitative results follow from the observation that, with time-declining discounting, the unusual delays and persistence of climate impacts provide a commitment device for climate policy-makers, overturning a fundamental climate-policy conclusion from...

R. F. Kiefl, 2, 3 M. D. Hossain, 2 B. M. Wojek, 5 S. R. Dunsiger, G. D. Morris, T. Prokscha, Z. Salman, J. Baglo, D. A. Bonn, 3 R. Liang, 3 W. N. Hardy, 3 A. Suter, and E. Morenzoni Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z1 TRIUMF, 4004 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 2A3 Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Canada Paul Sch...

Differences in individual wealth holdings are widely viewed as a driving force of economic inequality. However, as this finding relies on crosssection data, we may confuse older with wealthier. We propose a new method to adjust for age effects in cross-sections, which eliminates transitory wealth inequality due to age, yet preserves inequality arising from other factors. This new method is supe...

This paper investigates the effect of private pensions on the retirement wealth distribution. We incorporate stochastic private pension coverage into a calibrated life-cycle model with stochastic earnings. Private pensions lead to higher net worth inequality at retirement, which is closer to the inequality observed in the PSID than a model without private pensions. However, the offset effect of...

Redistributive Taxation and Personal Bankruptcy in US States Both personal bankruptcy and redistributive taxes can insure households’ consumption risk and both vary considerably across US states. We derive sufficient conditions under which more redistributive taxation makes bankruptcy exemptions less attractive both for the intratemporal insurance and for inter-temporal consumption smoothing. E...

An open puzzle for climate-policy analysis is how policies could be made sensitive to climate change impacts spanning over centuries while keeping the shorterterm macroeconomic policies connected to the descriptive facts. We develop a tractable general-equilibrium model for climate-economy interactions with timedeclining pure discounting. The model resolves the puzzle: preferences over longterm...

Quasi-hyperbolic discounting predicts impatience over short-run tradeoffs. I present a direct non-laboratory test of this implication using data on the nutritional intake of food stamp recipients. Caloric intake declines by 10 to 15 percent over the food stamp month, implying a significant preference for immediate consumption. These findings constitute a rejection of the permanent income hypoth...

Micro data over the life cycle shows different patterns of consumption for housing and non-housing goods: the consumption profile of non-housing goods is hump-shaped while the consumption profile for housing first increases monotonically and then flattens out. These patterns hold true at each consumption quartile. This paper develops a quantitative, dynamic general equilibrium model of life-cyc...